I stood with my arms crossed, not quite tapping my feet, but having to suppress the urge as I stared down at my versation partner.

  “Are you … apologising?” Valenith looked at me dubiously, a hint of disbelief hanging off his every word.

  Am I? I thought, sg up my him for a moment. I was supposed to be some dignified diviy to him, I think, would he really take it well if I just apologised straight up? Practically admitting I was fallible?

  Well, I was.

  “I suppose,” I said grudgingly. “My expectations are still skewered and it was unrealistie to expect you to behave how I wanted you to. Especially without express orders to do so.”

  “ … uood?” Val said after a long moment, managing to keep his fad voice steady, but I could tell his emotions were in disarray. That his trol slipped far enough for me to feel it with just my passive empathy, he must have truly been deeply disturbed by my apology. “I will endeavour to act acc to your expectations going forward.”

  “Yes, well … we’ll see.” I nodded slowly. “We will have to establish priorities with every task iure. But I think we make it work. I don’t want you to jeopardise the success of a mission to save lives, only to save lives when success is certain.”

  *****

  Experiments. There were just so many things to experiment with. I had been keeping to doing only the fun ones with likely immediate bes at the end of them myself tely, while unloading the tedious oo my mind-cores and the ones requiring a more experieouch to Zedev.

  Just about every sihing I did with bio-energy could be doer. Less energy wasted, more streamlined forms, more cohesively put together structure and so on and so forth. The list was infinite.

  For example, my mind-cores were still w hard on making some of the most costly bio-materials less expeo make while Zedev was w on king up the effiy heat verters. Already, he had e up with a design that pushed the energy produ up by 5% and I barely dropped the proje his table a week ago.

  It wasn’t surprising that the Ambull didn’t have a geically perfect design to serve as my heat verters, but the speed at which Zedev improved upon it was still both enviable and praiseworthy.

  I didn’t know what manner of gifts a Magos Biologist liked, but I should probably think about it. He deserved something nice for all his excellent work.

  Relut as I was, I kept myself from letting my thoughts linger for another moment. I had work to do, cultists to stop and daemons to banish. I only allowed myself a quick update to check up on my still-running experiments, to make sure none of them were about to derail catastrophically.

  The monkey was taking apart a rail gun and was attempting to shove the energy battery of a whole-ass ons battery into it, but that was the worst of it. I let the little fellow py with his toys and just reinforced the wall around him to withstand the explosive failure of that endeavour, should it e down to it?

  I had already sent a good thousand drones, shaped into a vaguely humanoid form but made up of eyranid parts to the surface. Tur human, they will hopefully look like humans in sleek white body armour instead of the monstrous space-bugs that they really are.

  They were running off of the still, ehm, rudimentary bat algorithm I’d loaded into their heads with my mind-cores running ht. I myself was running ht over those mind-cores.

  The bat algorithm, for example, sidered anyone doing anything even just vaguely appearing like an attack as a threat to be elimihe mind-cores could realise that a kid screaming as lunatic cultists were trying to gut his mother with a buttering knife, robably not a sonic attack, but it was better to be safe than sorry. My mind-cores had a tendency to act with what might be called an overly practical mi, meaning, they might just give the drohe go-ahead ‘just in case’ the bawling kid was in fact a camoufged bomb disguised as a toddler.

  Nothing like that happened yet, and I was left just remotely running every likely votile decision through my head. I had to go over hundreds every sed, but it was manageable. I had both the bio-energy and soul energy to spare.

  The only town I had left rgely to fend for itself was the one and my fake duplicate was in. I sidered looking into where exactly his Inquisitirlfriend was, but I didn’t want to make the little adventure I reparing for myself to be ruined by spoilers.

  They couldn’t do anything to me, and I retty sure the Inquisitor chick was freaking out about some strange ype of xeno popping up all of a sudden. With that xeno being me and my legion of drones annihiting the cultist preseny newly quered po make a point, I had only sent three of my lesser bat droo each town, with the only exception being the capital which was teeming with the little shits and was five times the size of the sed-rgest settlement.

  Try as they might, they couldn’t even scratch my drones with anything short of a melta or something simirly hard-hitting. Of which, they apparently only had a few of, making it pretty easy to avoid them hitting any of my drones.

  With most things in order, I turned a fra of my attention back to the drone I had left behind with . I might not be there personally, but I could puppet it from a distance.

  *****

  cursed as another sbolt impacted the wall mere inches away from his head as he snapped out a few retaliatory bolts of his own. They didn’t nd of course, but they shattered the windshield, temporarily blinding the driver and sending the car careering around for a bit as the one behind it smacked into its rear end.

  His foes thusly slowed for a moment, and he beat a hasty retreat through the back door, finding himself in a ste room. The woman he had been drinking tea with not long ago was surprisingly the first oo follow after him, a frown of fearful worry on her face as she looked around the new room.

  ’s thoughts were whirling, cogs clig as he found one gring problem with the room: it had no door leading outside.

  Windows? He checked quickly, and found only a small dropdown window that the white-haired woman might have mao squeeze through, but he doubted he could even just get his head through it without getting stubsp;

  I could use a melta right about now. allowed himself a moment of surly cussing, imagining blowing a hole into the damned wall to get out. Damn it. He should have taken Jurgen with him.

  Sure, that might have alerted the unreasonably rge number of spread-out lesser daemons and psyker cultists of a Bnk’s presen the p, and would have gotten far too much attention ohahy, but he would have someone dependable with him at least.

  Instead, all he had at hand now was his spistol, and a bunch of civies scared out of their minds. Civies, who worshipped a bsted Chaos God like it was normal. He did not trust a single one of them to as much as cut his beard without slitting his throat.

  Still … they clearly wanted nothing to do with the proper cultists and he could always use more bodies between him and the enemy. The only problem was that he couldn’t even arm them with anything beyond kitware.

  “Frak,” whispered, trying to find an out as the roar of engines bred just outside, followed up by the maniacal ughter he’d e to associate with some of the more deranged Saneshi cultists. Well, there was nothing to it.

  He couldn’t kill all of them alone, but calling reinforts was impossible with the cultists jamming his -bead. That made destroying the jammer a priority, only preceded by surviving long enough to actually be saved by the reinforts.

  He could hope that Jurgen and the others back at the safe-house noticed the cultists and were already on their way, but knew he couldn’t leave anything up to ‘hope’. That never worked out.

  Still, he was not winning a shootout against three vans full of psychos with just his humble spistol.

  “Wouldn’t be hiding a firearm under your clothes, by any ce?” asked, gng over at the woman. “Would you?”

  “Uuhm.” She scrambled to open up her handbag, then pulled out what had almost mistaken frenade in a moment of hopefulness. “I’ve got pepper spray? … and a knife!”

  With that, she snatched up a kit knife as long as her forearm, made of stainless steel.

  “Better than nothing,” he said, an encing grin practised over his turies of service slipping onto his face effortlessly. It had saved him more times thahe spistol in his arm, ving troopers to put themselves between him ah on numerous occasions. “When they ehrough the door, throepper spray at them. I will shoot it, and hopefully whatever happens keeps them off our backs for a bit.”

  The woman gave a jerky nod, her lips in a thin line. She was holding herself together admirably well for someone who’d supposedly never had to fight anything more dangerous than a rat in her life. That was good. She might be useful.

  Of the few people who had been unfortunate enough to be in the cafe at the time, the server was huddling behind the ter, while the young couple were hiding away in a er. All three quivering in terror.

  took a quice outside, and saw one van, the oh the bsted windshield e to a screeg halt just outside while the other two split off to the left and right, heading somewhere down those streets to cause havoc.

  That suddenly made surviving this much more doable, with two-thirds of them gone. checked his -bead again, but of course, the jammer seemed to be on the van parked just outside.

  “Get ready,” he whispered, fingers ched around his spistol and keeping track of the womao him out of the er of his eyes. He heard them exiting the van, then cag as they strutted up to the front door. “Throw NOW.”

  The woman lobbed it with an underhahrow that would have made some troopers in the Guard jealous. leaned out from behind the cover, spistol aimed just as the first trio of cultists saw the pepper spray a metre away from their faces.

  He fired and bsted a fist-sized hole through one of the cultists neck. That would have been a pretty good hit, had he been aiming for that. His sed bolt struck his actual target, and the pressed energy bolt ighe gas ihe pepper spray in a fiery ball of death that exploded outwards.

  The idiot whose neck he had blown out had been bsted back out the open door, likely dead as his flowy royal purple robes caught fire. The other two stumbled back, screaming and g at their faces as fmes licked at their clothes.

  One of them was a woman, barely wearing anything, only a few bands of cloth that kept her from exposing everything to the world. That meant there was nothing keeping the fmes from searing her flesh.

  The other was a man, dressed in flowing robes simir to the first and he likewise went up in fmes like he had doused his clothes in alcohol just to be extra fmmable.

  His eyes quickly roved the corpses for ons, but found only knives, short swords and a single slug thrower. Someone had returned his sbolts before with some kind of energy on of their own, someoill waiting outside.

  Probably sitting right on top of the jammer he would have to get rid of if he wao survive this day.

  P3t1